the kitchen is hot today
wet with sunlight
blood heavy
slippery and yellow
outside, flies are
driven mad with heat
they circle
like they did in Jericho
light hits the car’s roof
blurs like swept up chalk
and hisses
muttering a febrile rosary
today it made me laugh
to think you once said to me
poor baby
there’s no living in poetry
Dream
The other night I dreamt you came into my house and wouldn’t leave. At first, I didn’t mind – we were just sitting together in my kitchen – but as I neared the dregs of my second cup of tea, I started to wonder when you planned to go. When I woke, I considered the parallel universe where we now somehow coexist: your keys in my fruit bowl; your hands on my bath taps; your feet on my couch. And in the haze of my morning I wasn’t sure what it had meant or whether it had even been a dream at all, and half expected to see you pass by, step-less and slight, like a ghost on the landing.
Shark
Finally! A good one. Can’t remember who asked. Who knows how these things come up, just go with it fast. Which creature would you least like to be killed by? If you had to. If you just had to. Doesn’t matter why. We dipped into silence, underwater in thought, each seeking an answer in the fashion we’d wrought. The lot of us sat in a circle of green bottles and spent ends, barely friends in a debauched fairy’s ring – and, for a second, not saying a thing. Godzilla doesn’t count. Then one spoke out. A grizzly bear. Why? You could just run. From a bear? You’re fucking joking, son. A few others offered and we talked through the zoo. But I didn’t have to think – I already knew. How, being frozen in the deep, I’d die thinking of you, as it swam, torpedoed steel, and took what it wanted. It’s eyes gloss and haunted. I wondered if you’d feel it burst you apart. Turn your organs to mulch. Teeth through the heart. After a while, we spilled beer, and turned to something new, but I sat for a while, and thought of the blue, of the dark and of death, and of it, and of you.
Secret
Later on, as I’m walking back to the station, I remembered when she used to do her lists. They started years back, before she started ditching mass, before she started pinching things – even before Nan. She would spend hours somewhere secret, because I never saw her do it, writing list after list of all the families we knew – our neighbours’ families, our teachers’ families, our friends, their mothers and fathers, families off the telly, their names, their ages, aunties, uncles, cousins – all the many ways in which they belonged to one another. All the families we had ever known, all but our own, hidden away in drawers and under mattresses for years. In that quiet house, I always found them, and when she didn’t think I was in, or if she didn’t think I could hear her, she would cry, and no one ever came.
It was like lugging a dead cow, and that was the way we would forever describe it. All four of us had heaved it, the great patterned reject: digging our fingers into the threadbare fabric of the arms and sweating, our faces red and determined. Two at each end, and another – less of a help – trotting along near the middle. Every dozen yards or so, we’d stop, taking loud, open-mouthed breaths of chilled October air and grinning at one another, before tackling the next stint.
Shaun and Luke had calculated that it would take us about an hour to cart it from the layby outside Victoria Wines, where we’d found it, to Broan’s Field, behind Shaun’s house.
‘An hour. How’d you work that out?’ Siobhan had scowled.
‘Just worked it out like. Maths.’ Luke had shrugged.
‘You’re in red group for maths and your mam says you still can’t tell the time.’
‘Fuck off.’
Siobhan winked.
Continue reading “Carrying”
An hour into Scarface
(for the fifteenth time)
the power cuts
and the sloping Bolivian hills
snap into darkness.
The silence thrills us;
it hits like a car crash.
We slowly clank into action.
You use your phone light to find the fuse box –
Who owns a torch these days?
I light a candle:
the one in the burnt yellow glass
and look out the window
at the street in pitch.
I imagine our neighbours in the dark
arms outstretched, like swimmers,
reaching for lighters and batteries –
whatever glimmers.
I wonder about kids crying,
dinners spoiled,
and hands
feeling in the dark.
After a while, still nothing:
no spark. We step outside.
The night is balmy –
the bricks hold the heat of the day
and it floods back into the house.
I fetch beers from the warm fridge.
The bulb is out so I feel for the tins:
I know where they are
and grab a few.
Outside you’re looking up
and I at you.
whenever she’d get bad
my mammy would say baby
we come into this world alone
we go out of this world alone
how funny it was
that she chose the word we –
how inclusive!
all of us, suffering
together,
knowing the same
low down, gutter-licking,
earth-swallowing,
blackout blues
misery en masse
the tragedy not in feeling it
but in feeling it alone
and not realising how
we aren’t
Look up directly at the sky:
see how quickly it has turned
white as a blanched almond.
Notice how the yellow sunlight
has slipped into the ground
where we were just walking.
Now stop talking.
That way, you can really hear
the bristling shush of dried ferns;
they sound so like the sea.
Sink into the sound of this.
Let your breathing bow to the wind
as its veil billows before us.
Now insects join the chorus.
They might be flecks of dust haloed
in gold, stung by the sun:
stitching a map across the day.
Trace their idle threads of flight
and sink into the upturned palm of earth.
Feel yourself breathe out, at last –
but hold still with me
until the moment’s passed.
By the time we’d realised that there weren’t any glasses in the caravan, we were already pretty cut. As explained in the rental email, we found the keys under the garden statue of the stone frog, and had spent the first, hurried half hour dragging the bags in from the car and lining our stomachs, before we started on the wine. This decision had been one of convenience, rather than particular taste, as it had been easier to locate the green bottles, clanking in the boot, than the vodka, which had been pilfered from Fran’s older brother, stuffed in a pillowcase, and hidden in the depths of her suitcase.
We hadn’t noticed the absence of glasses, because the protocol with wine was to drink straight from the bottle. We’d seen that photo of Rod Stewart and David Bowie doing the same thing and never looked back, but the spirits would need something for mixing. We weren’t pissed enough to take it neat. Not yet. We were after a vessel.
After a bit of a scout around our very limited surroundings, and a brief but considerate glance at the ashtray, the cracked sugar bowl, and the dusty ceramic vase by the sink, we were ready to concede, when our eyes settled on the empty Pot Noodles.
Continue reading “The Old Men and the Sea”
Here I am
Here I’m stood
I’m in this house
I’m in this wood
I waited here
As best I could
Inside in this house
Inside in this wood
You will not come
You said you would
I’m in this house
I’m in this wood
And now it’s wrong
It can’t be good
Here in this house
Here in this wood
She’d insisted her father meet her outside in the car park, because he’d make a big deal of it, and she didn’t want the others to see. She knew, before it happened, how it would go.
He’d be stood up. He’d have arrived too early. He’d be waiting, in the same make of tan suede loafers he’d worn every weekend since she could remember, arms outstretched, pinning a wobbling smile to his face. He’d sob into her hair. He’d take big, heaving breaths of relief and there would be surging emotion that he himself probably wouldn’t understand. His cheeks would be wet and, because it was a Sunday, he wouldn’t have shaved, so his beard would scrape against her face. She dreaded the performance of it, and felt ashamed to dread such love.
As it turned out, because she was still a hair’s breadth off eighteen, they wouldn’t release her without the presence of a nominated guardian, so he met her in the reception. He needed to sign for her, like a package – a fragile one he’d strap into the front seat of the Volvo, and hold fast as he turned sharp corners.
Continue reading “Pet”
The sun shone, though the day was far from warm. As she’d sat, waiting for him, the first few flakes of snow had fallen. It had seemed strange to see it happen, in the sunlight, and they had come down so slowly that, at first, she hadn’t been sure it was snow at all, so fragile was the offering that it looked to her more like debris. Ash. Like the aftermath of some great fire.
Sorry I’m late. The fucking dog’s been driving me mental. She’s in heat.
He’d been scowling into the cold air, as she’d watched him round the corner past the chemist, and the lines on his forehead had not yet settled back into his face. She thought he looked tired and irritable, and the possibility of being punished by one of his foul moods had spurred in her a desire to keep the walk brief, or to avoid it altogether. Disappointment hit her in the stomach, and she began thinking of an out. Fake a phone call. Feign a limp. But it wasn’t long before he was smirking at her, dancing on the spot to keep warm, and she found herself smirking back. Once again, the open morning seemed to roll out before them, like a bolt of gold fabric.
Continue reading “The Fall”